


When Winter Comes

by audreyslove



Series: Inspired By OQ 2019 [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 22:11:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20749565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreyslove/pseuds/audreyslove
Summary: Written for IBOQ and based on the amazing manip by FlaviaOttaviane.Pre-curse AU





	When Winter Comes

It’s rare that Robin sees anyone in deep in the forest this time of year. It’s late in autumn now, and there’s a chill in the air. The woods smell like rot, like damp earth and decaying leaves, with a hint of the pungent odor of over-ripe berries mixed with dirt, pine, and mud.

There’s more, though, a hint of what’s to come. The faint smell of snow lingers in his nostrils.

Yes, the woods are his and his men’s (and the occasional resourceful thief from out of town’s) for a few more blessed months, until Spring comes and the villagers take an interest in nature again and the King’s guards decided the pretty, shaded trails of the forest need patrolling again.

There’s still a hint of a boy in him, a part that wants to run and stomp in the fallen leaves, roll down hills and play in the blessed solitude But he’s a man now, at least, he’s supposed to be, and, there’s a living to earn. He has people who rely on him, so he puts away those childish thoughts.

Lazy fuckers.

He’s just thinking of the beauty and safety of an emptied out forest when he spots her.

A woman is lying on the forest ground as if she were a part of it already, layers of cotton and linen pooling and mixing amongst the fallen leaves. Her hair is a shock of black, her clothes dull yellows, olive, and browns.

Though he does see a patch of red in her middle. Crimson liquid pools on the ground and stains the leaves. He notices more of the blood then. It’s stuck to bits of earth, to the grass like dewdrops, dusted on the ground and against trees and branches like splatted paint.

This woman has traveled with this injury, it seems. Travelled in _his _woods until she collapsed.

Using this abandoned place for her protection.

But in doing so she’s invited danger, perhaps a search party will come for her.

She is dressed as a peasant, so he doesn’t expect a huge group with resources to come looking, but then, this woman lying and bleeding out is unspeakably beautiful. Beauty always attracts powerful men, dangerous men. And now, in Robin’s woods, there is a beautiful woman someone obviously sought wanted to either kill or keep for themselves against her will.

If he cared about his own survival he’d leave her, retreat back to his men and warn them that there’s likely a murderer in their midst and they best avoid being caught up in whatever is going on.

It’s what one would expect of a gang of thieves, but Robin and his men, annoyingly enough, have a conscious and a sense of humanity.

So he doesn’t really think twice about approaching her.

He’s not sure if she will survive her injuries, but he refuses to let her die without making an attempt to revive her.

“Milady, you are injured,” he whispers uselessly into her ear as he feels her shirt, weak breath on his cheek.

Alive, but barely.

Certainly not conscious, but alive nonetheless.

Her beauty is even more hypnotizing up close, and he feels himself getting sucked in by the porcelain of her cheeks, the scarlet of her lips. She’s small and slender but has no lack of curves, and glancing down the slope of her neck leads him to catch a glance of ample cleavage he absolutely should not be admiring right now.

She is gorgeous. No doubt extremely sought after by men, this mysterious, gorgeous creature left to die in the thick of the woods.

“I don’t want to leave you,” he speaks sweetly despite believing she can't hear him, “but I don’t have the things I need to treat this wound, and I fear moving you may cause your injuries to worsen. I don’t want you to bleed to death.”

The woman doesn’t respond, of course, but he hopes somehow, somewhere, she can hear him.

“I won’t hurt you,” he promises. “I won’t take advantage of you, I won’t kidnap you or keep you as my own. I’m going to fix you up right as new, repair your wounds so you can fly free again. And whoever did this to you,” Robin pauses, sighs deeply, “he will have to pay for his crime. In this life or another.”

He rides back to the nearby tavern and manages to coerce the lady they affectionately call “Granny” to follow him back into the forest. Granny is a healer, and more importantly, she is a woman who protects other women. She’s safe to share this secret with, this lost, vulnerable beauty deep in the woods.

Granny says little as she fixes the wound (the woman had fallen in a way that put pressure on it, she explains, so it was right of Robin not to move her, she would have bled more quickly if he had).

When she is done repairing the wound, she looks at Robin and shrugs. “She’ll live if recovery goes well. Where do we take her now, then?”

“Your tavern?” he asks. “If it's too much trouble, I can pay for a room for her until she’s—“

“Boy, she’s not staying with me, do I look like I have a death wish?”

“What? I’ll transport her. Whatever bandit hurt her I’m sure he’s no interest in—“

“You really didn’t notice? Take a look at her. Doesn’t she look familiar?”

He’s taken many looks, but he indulges in another, getting lost in the looks of her until Granny interrupts with a frustrated sigh.

“That’s the girl set to be Queen next week, you fool,” she mutters.

“Her?” Robin asks. He hasn’t paid attention to the planned festivities, to the talk of this new beautiful noble set to be queen. He heard she was young, but _this _young? Set to marry a man in his fifties?

“This is her alright,” Granny nods. “Regina Mills. And someone wants her dead. And you can bet they won’t stop that quest easily. They’ll find that girl easily if we bring her into my inn. So, again, what do we do now?”

Robin’s throat goes dry as he searches for the best solution.

“There’s a little cave there,” he motions towards the rocks. “We can keep her there for a bit until she recovers. I will stay with her. Just tell me how to care for her.”

.::.

Regina begins to stir hours later, at sunset.

At first she’s delirious with pain and fear. She fights Robin, screams and tries to run, but the simple attempt has her blacking out again.

Hours later, she awakens to see his face and repeat the same thing — screams, hits, tries to run and but falls unconscious before she gets a few steps in.

But the third time she does not scream. She focuses as best she can, staring daggers into his eyes, her lips trembling.

“Who are you?” she asks.

Robin breathes in and answers as honestly as he can. “I’m Robin Hood. A lawless bandit whose only skill is thievery. Which did come in luck, since I found it was only fair that I rob Death of beautiful young woman today.”

She laughs at his far too clever words before wincing in pain. Her stitches are still setting, of course. Robin vows to take it easy with the humor, he promises. He keeps her up with stories of his life as a bandit, answering any questions she might have.

He never asks for her story. Never asks what she was doing in the woods with such a bad injuries to her gut. 

But at the end of the night, she asks meekly, “Robin, do you know… anything about me?”

“I know that you have a good sense of humor,” he answers, “That you can keep a man interested and make for lovely conversation.” He knows what she is really asking, though, so he answers, “And of course, I know you are much too beautiful and too good for King Leopold to possess.”

“The late Queen Eva's family feels quite the opposite,” she shrugs. “They have a replacement Queen in mind, and apparently it wasn’t me.”

“They did this to you?” he asks.

She nods. “They told me they were some rival Kingdom but I saw the family mark on the armor of their Knight last night as they tried to kill me. It was Queen Ava’s family."

“We won’t let them win,” Robin vows. “I will provide you with safe passage back to the Kingdom, and you can—“

“Gods no,” she breathes, “I don’t want to be Queen, Robin. They can have the throne. I told them, I swore to them, all I wanted was a way out of this. They said they would help me if that was what I really wanted. They got me these clothes, helped me escape... but I supposed they didn't believe I'd stay away in the end and decided to kill me after we left the palace grounds. I managed to escape and I just kept running deeper and deeper into the woods, into the thicket, where their horses couldn’t follow. But they obviously got a good stab in before I could break away.”

“Lucky shot, for you,” Robin tells her. “hit no major organs. You will live.”

“Good. I want to live,” she answers, “not just survive. I want to _live._”

“I want that from you too,” he promises, and oh, how he means it.

“Then don’t take me back to that palace,” she orders. “Let me live here, let me start a real life for myself the way you have.”

He would sooner stab a knife through his heart than return her to that castle she believes to be her prison.

So he stays with her while she recovers.

Regina gains her strength back, little by little. Every day he expects her to leave, but every night she stays in their cave, and he finds himself lying beside her.

They don’t kiss, they never kiss, but what they have seems almost more intimate than anything sexual could ever be.

Regina becomes irreplaceable to him so quickly he doesn’t even know how it happens.

Granny checks her wound weeks later and gives her a clean bill of health.

“Right before winter, too. You’re lucky, girl,” she grouses. “But you’re going to die anyway if you don’t find a warmer place to rest than this leaky cave.”

“You can stay with us,” Robin offers. “In case people are still looking for you, it’s safe. And warm.”

“I shouldn’t,” Regina says.

But thanks the gods, she does.

She claims she will leave when the ground thaws and the flowers bloom, and Robin dreads the winter's end even more.

But they grow closer. He falls more in love with her every day, his heart squeezing whenever a warm winter morning fools him into thinking spring has sprung early. He tries to not love her, but it’s far too late for that. She is beautiful, she is smart, she is somehow the perfect addition to the merrie men, laughing and scheming and joking with the fellas, while still retaining her femininity and elegance.

He is so far gone for her, he can hardly breathe when he looks at her.

He thinks, sometimes, she sees him the same way.

He is not certain, however, until, on a particularly bitter cold winter night, she asks him to lie by her side for added warmth, and by the first rays of morning light, they are both sweating and positively boiling from the heat and the passion that forms when their two bodies come together in a new and intimate way. He's had sex before, oh, plenty of sex, but he has never made love, and that is what this night is. That is what he does with Regina He wakes feeling satiated for the first time, knowing his life will never be the same and determined to beg, to offer her everything to stay.

“I’m not yours,” she tells him when she wakes.

“I know,” he tells her. “I would never imagine you as anyone’s but your own.”

“You needed to save me when we first met, and I am forever grateful for that. But I don’t need saving anymore. And you can’t think of me as weak.”

“I don’t,” he assures her.

“I can handle myself. I don’t _need_ you,” she explains, her face scrunched up as if pains her to say it.

“But _I_ need you,” he tells her, baring his soul and exposing a vulnerability, something he’s trained his whole life to conceal.

It’s a risk, like any bold action worth doing is bound to be, but this one, much like that first risk he took in saving her, pays off tenfold.

She drags him back to bed, covers him in kisses, whispers promises, words of devotion, tells him she’s fallen in love with him somehow, despite never wanting to truly love anyone in this world, despite her fears and anger when it comes to marriage and a woman’s role within it.

She never leaves his side after that.

He does occasionally need to come to her rescue, but she does the majority of the saving from that moment on.

She wears a scar from that first day across her belly, a constant reminder of what he almost lost and all he gained. He traces it with his fingertips and thinks of that morning when all he desired was the solitude that comes with winter. Instead, he found her.

He laughs to himself at how fortunate fate can be. How wonderful that the very wound that almost killed Regina instead brought them to this wonderful, better life.

He still looks forward to every winter, but his desire for solitude never returns. He has his family now.


End file.
